Conceptualising and framing STEAM education
What Is (And What Is Not) This Educational Approach
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5082395 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jefferson Rodrigues-Silva (0000-0002-8334-2107, Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de Minas Gerais), Alex Alsina (0000-0001-8506-1838, Universitat de Girona, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 16 |
| Publication date | 2023-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Texto Livre Linguagem e Tecnologia (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1983-3652 • E-ISSN: 1983-3652 |
| Publisher | FapUNIFESP (SciELO) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1590/1983-3652.2023.44946 |
| OpenAlex | W4387875578 |
| SciELO | S1983-36522023000100222 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 29 |
STEAM is a recent educational approach intending the interdisciplinary teaching of science, technology, engineering, arts/humanities, and mathematics. The literature reports conceptual confusion that frequently diverts STEAM practice and research to issues concerning particular activities or contexts. Therefore, we carried out a narrative review of articles indexed in the Web of Science (WoS) to elucidate STEAM education's history, epistemology, and divergences. As a strategy, we first focused on documents that could offer a panoramic view of the object of study - literature reviews and articles about STEAM frameworks. Through them, we identified essential discussion points and further expanded the review. As a result, we articulated rationalities about why STEAM is not a mere evolution of STEM, a teaching methodology, or just a synonym for interdisciplinarity. Furthermore, we discussed the appropriateness of interdisciplinarity in STEAM - since it is strongly supported by the disciplines and their intersections - instead of pursuing transdisciplinarity, meaning knowledge remains undefined in a holistic whole. We differentiated STEAM disciplines (list of the five knowledge areas), STEAM activities (interdisciplinary teaching unity of at least two STEAM disciplines), and STEAM education (educational approach of interdisciplinarity between all five disciplines). Finally, we defined and proposed a framework for STEAM in a table format that stresses two necessary and sufficient conditions - interdisciplinarity and the five acronym areas. The framework permits envisioning the plurality of teaching methodologies and educational objectives consistent with STEAM
Curriculum · Engineering ethics · Epistemology · Framing (construction · Pedagogy · Social science · Sociology · Terminology · Transdisciplinarity · Biomedical and Engineering Education · Engineering · Experimental Learning in Engineering · Interdisciplinary Research and Collaboration
A conceptual framework for integrated STEM education
The Brundtland report
Writing narrative literature reviews for peer-reviewed journals
The Fourth Industrial Revolution
Where's the evidence that active learning works?
Writing narrative style literature reviews
STEAM in practice and research
Growth rates of modern science
STEM vs. STEAM Education and Student Creativity
Fostering Critical Reflection in Primary Education through STEAM Approaches
The trouble with STEAM and why we use it anyway
Risking Ourselves in Education
Toward a Philosophy of STEAM in the Anthropocene
Applied interdisciplinary research
Accessing the Inaccessible
| Citations per year | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Highly cited | No |